Dave Berri finally likes the Thunder
Dave Berri, author of “The Wages of Wins” and the winner of the 2009 Truehoop Stat Geek Smackdown has some encouraging words for and about the Thunder today on his W. of W. blog. His “wins produced” metric and “win score” have been debated over and over and have proven to be as good as anything out there for measuring players and teams. Over the last couple of years Berri and his metric have been a little tough on Kevin Durant, especially in his rookie season. He did admit to big improvement for KD in year two.
Today on the blog he tells us what the final season win totals might look like for the Thunder according to wins produced.
…This quartet are on pace to produce 39.0 wins. As a team, Oklahoma City has an efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency) of 2.4, a mark that projects to about 47 wins across an 82 game season. So the four players listed above are responsible for about 83% of the team’s wins.
Missing from this list is any player at power forward or center. Jeff Green remains a below average player. And Nick Collison and Etan Thomas have yet to produce much in 2009-10. D.J. White, though, has posted a 0.423 WP48. Before Thunder fans get too excited, White has only played 44 minutes and has yet to play more than 15 minutes in a game (or more than two games in a row). Read the whole article. Discuss away.
Pretty much echoes what people are saying. Durant and Thabo have been playing well, Harden’s been good off the bench, Westbrook’s been up and down, and Jeff Green has been disappointing. Nice to see Dave Berri’s model confirms this.
James Harden’s WP48 especially is pretty nice, considering he’s been so inconsistent.
We really need a good big man!
Discuss? Hmm. No, I’d rather talk about Marcin Gortat. Besides, I don’t really understand what he’s talking about anyway. I’m not very adept at advanced stats and stuff like that.
Marcin Gortat… Hmm, he plays more minutes, but puts up the same numbers as Ibaka. Sounds like he is overpaid to me. j/k Vega
The article seems like an accurate representation of performance. Jeff Green’s numbers are not as good as a traditional PF, averages less rebounds, and a lower FG% due to more outside shots, and krstic doesnt compliment him well, once ibaka matures in a year or 2, we will have the rebounding machine we need to make green look good.
Oh and Gortats numbers are only average, turning out to be way overpaid, 18 mpg and only 4.5 rpg and 4.8 points, adjusted for minutes thats only 1 reb and 1 point better then what etan is giving us.
The main issue with Wins Produced is that rebounds are fairly transitive–if one player doesn’t get the defensive rebound, likely another on the same team could as well. In other words, it overrates rebounds somewhat. It’s still a lot better than PER, though! I like to look at adjusted plus/minus and (early in the year) statistical plus/minus.
Here are the statistical +/- ratings thus far:
Player SPM Contrib
Kevin Durant 5.5 61.5
James Harden 6.1 34.5
Russell Westbrook 1.7 16.9
Thabo Sefolosha 0.9 8.3
Kyle Weaver 11.3 6.5
D.J. White 5.7 4.8
Jeff Green 0.3 2.6
Ryan Bowen 12.8 2.0
Shaun Livingston -16.9 -6.5
Kevin Ollie -2.3 -9.0
Nick Collison -2.1 -9.2
Serge Ibaka -6.2 -12.2
Nenad Krstic -3.9 -26.6
Etan Thomas -10.0 -46.5
The first number is the estimated plus/minus of the player (some have a minute sample size–Bowen and Weaver) per 40 minutes of play, and the second is the total contribution in point margin thus far on the season.
Statistical Plus/Minus (SPM) is a method of estimating each player’s impact from the box score statistics. SPM is listed in points above the average player playing per 40 minutes–so if that player was replaced by an average player for 40 minutes, SPM is the difference in the final margin. The total of all player’s contributions will sum to the actual scoring margin (each team’s total will equal half of the overall margin). The original method was outlined by Dan Rosenbaum at 82games.com; recently additional factors were added by Neil Paine at Basketball-Reference.com.
Thabo’s just above average rating on statistical +/- is better than I expected. A horrible early Adjusted +/- might be a surprise to some if you haven’t heard me already mention it.
Green’s just above average rating on Statistical +/- might surprise others but I expected it. I knew about the pretty horrible early Adjusted +/- though the error is still large.
Kristic is running a few points below average on Statistical and also has the horrible early Adjusted +/-.
Not as horrible as Thomas though on Statistical or Adjusted. Ollie is negative too, though modestly on both. By Adjusted 4 of Presti’s role playing decisions Krstic, Thabo, Thomas and Ollie aren’t looking good. And yet somehow the team is doing well. There is something wrong or at least confusing with this conflict. Maybe it breaks one way or another later. Ultimately it is about lineup performance.
The top tier draft choices are all looking good on Adjusted +/- except Green who is the lowest in that group on Statistical too. If minutes are really and fairly competitive then Ibaka, White and Collison should be given chances and Green is on the spot.
Westbrook is a bit low on Statistical but Adjusted has him as the team megawatt driving force well above Durant though he is doing might fine early too.
By Adjusted +/- the team is being carried by Westbrook and Durant asmong starters with the best contributions off the bench being from Harden and Collison.
By Statistical Collison drops away.
@DSMok1
I knew you and Crow would find this interesting. I’ve noticed you posting WP stuff before.
I was going to talk about Noah vs Green since it was raised at Berris site but I think I’ll pass since I’ve touched on it before.
The main issue is whether Green is or will be what he was envisioned to be. It is not a clear yes yet by any means- on inside scoring, passing, defense or rebounding. Whether there is enough data to say a clear no that will vary by the person. It isn’t looking that good for a 5th pick right now from my perspective.
The “Project big wing” draft of Durant-Green looked like it was about them being special as a combo as if that was going to be the next twist to surpass other teams- a new version of Jordan-Pippen moved up the position chart. Even if they can tolerated, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody assert that the pairing by itself is actually a driving force on the team. It is just 2 players as far as I can tell. Similar in many ways, not really helping each other that notably. Sure the amigos get along and that’s nice but when it comes to the 2nd deals I don’t think it will make a meaningful difference.
At this point Green has the expectation he will always be a 30+ minute player and head to pretty big money. Cut that back and he will be pissed. They may have stopped giving out minutes this season but he got his and there will probably be drama if they ever do move him back to twenty-some minutes or off the bench. But it will be pretty hard to allow Ibaka and/or White to emerge without doing so- unless Ibaka can be mainly a 5.
Same with Westbrook. Bump him down and he’d be pissed and start counting the days til he can leave. The expectations are too set to change now, the sense of entitlement is pretty strong.
It just wasn’t really as simple as giving them big minutes for experience. I guess if you were completely sure of yourself it might look that way or you knowingly gambled it would all work out you could take that chance. But knowing how often plans do not pan out, chemistry isn’t realized, I see it as a big gamble, the ways out made tougher by acting like this was the future, no question. It is hard to back off these guys. You can back off Krstic or Thabo easier.
Maybe it will work out as designed. Or maybe Presti or Brooks taking the heat will eventually have to make tough decisions. Big ones. With big consequences and maybe not as nice a final long-run outcome as they’d like after the after-shocks of those decisions (guys pissed, guys leaving).
But I am speculating again. Time will tell.
There is major new data available-
Adjusted 4 Factors.
For last season.
I might break out some of the findings regarding the Thunder
later.
Durant and Westbrook leading the way… with impact on team defense? That is what is suggested by the raw on/off data.
Team defense worse with especially Green then Thomas and Harden.
Harden offsets his defensive impact by being a strong positive on offense- compared to Thabo. Collison on the court was a big thing too, early, on offense.
As for lineups OKC now down to just 4 over 2 minutes a game and just 2 more over 1 minute a game.
So 45% of all the time is “chef’s surprise”.
I guess overall those lineups are only costing 1 point a game so maybe Brooks has some ability as a lineup manipulator. But there are probably better ways to use the minutes. Maybe a lot better.
White-Westbrook is dynamite, early. White-Durant is dynamite. Even White-Green is dynamite.
White-Ibaka raw +/- is dynamite. White-Harden is dynamite. White-Weaver is double dynamite. White-Collison is dynamite.
But it is spare time so far. Right or not?
Dynamite in terms of raw +/-. Selective and short time. But I’d use him more and find out more.
Nobody is gangbusters positive with Ibaka the way they are with White. Except White. For whatever that is worth.
The current starting lineup after a recent update is now only half as bad on Adjusted as before. But stat theory suggests there is only about a 1 in 6 chance that it would perform they way it has, considering opponents, and actually be truly positive long-run. But maybe Adjusted is off. Either that or it isn’t.